Toward A Politics of Res(s)ent(i)ment: Rethinking W.E.B. Du Bois’s the Quest of the Silver Fleece in the Racial Capitalocene
Aradığım dergi listede yok., cilt.1, sa.2, ss.69-83, 2026 (Hakemli Dergi)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 1 Sayı: 2
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Dergi Adı: Aradığım dergi listede yok.
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.69-83
- Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
is article examines how resentment functions as a political emotion within racialized capitalist relations through a reading of W. E. B. Du Bois’s e Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911). It argues that the novel reveals how racial capitalism produces not only material inequalities but also emotional formations that shape political consciousness and action. e study adopts the framework of the Capitalocene, particularly racial Capitalism, to challenge the explanatory limits of the Anthropocene, which attributes ecological and social crises to humanity as a homogeneous agent rather than to historically specific relations of capital, power, and exploitation. It also approaches emotions as relational formations produced within historical and social contexts rather than as individual or essential states. Du Bois’s novel is examined because it offers a powerful account of how racialized capitalist relations organize both material life and emotional experience. Drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s and Max Scheler’s conceptualizations of ressentiment, the analysis of the character Zora demonstrates that resentment should not be understood solely as an internalized or pathological condition. Instead, under specific historical and experiential circumstances, an initial moment of ressentiment can develop into a socio-political form of resentment that enables the recognition of injustice and the possibility of collective action. e article concludes that, within the Capitalocene, re(s)sent(i)ment is not a fixed emotional trajectory but a historically contingent political formation that may either reproduce existing relations of power or contribute to their critical transformation.